Organisations may be leaving critical gaps in their resilience plans by treating business continuity and disaster recovery as the same discipline, according to leading Microsoft solutions partner FormusPro.
The company warns that although the two are closely connected, they address different parts of an organisation’s response to disruption. Business continuity focuses on keeping essential operations running during an incident. Disaster recovery restores the technology, systems and data those operations depend upon.
Investing in one without the other may leave organisations unable to maintain services during cyber-attacks, infrastructure failures, flooding or other serious incidents.
“Business continuity asks how the organisation will keep operating, whilst disaster recovery asks how its technology will be restored,” said Paul Walker of FormusPro. “They share the same objective, but they solve different problems. Treating them as interchangeable creates gaps that often remain hidden until an organisation faces a genuine disruption.”
A business continuity plan considers the organisation as a whole. It should cover employees, customers, communications, premises, suppliers and essential processes. Disaster recovery sits within that wider strategy. It defines how applications, networks, cloud services, infrastructure, identities and data will be recovered safely.
FormusPro says organisations may create a false sense of security by focusing too heavily on either side.
A business may have clear communication plans and alternative working arrangements. However, these measures offer limited protection if critical systems remain unavailable for several days. Equally, an IT team could restore infrastructure quickly, yet still struggle if nobody has agreed which services take priority. Employees may also lack guidance about maintaining operations during the outage.
“Recovering the technology doesn’t automatically recover the business,” Walker continued. “Teams need to know which services matter most, how long the organisation can operate without them and what should happen whilst recovery takes place. Those decisions must shape the technical recovery plan.”
Modern cloud platforms, automation and Infrastructure as Code have changed how organisations approach disaster recovery. These technologies support faster and more consistent rebuilding, reducing the reliance on lengthy manuals and improvised recovery work.
However, FormusPro warns that technology alone won’t create resilience. Organisations must connect technical recovery targets with real operational priorities. This means business leaders and technical teams should plan, test and update both disciplines together.
